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JANE HUTCHEON [ABC radio]: Am I correct in saying that Friday, is that the Prime Minister’s Cricket 11 match that’s going to go ahead?

JOHN HOWARD: Yes, the game against the West Indies, yes.

JANE HUTCHEON: And that’s on Friday…

JOHN HOWARD: Yes, yes.

JANE HUTCHEON: …the same day that Van Nguyen is going to be executed…

JOHN HOWARD: Yes.

JANE HUTCHEON: Do you think it would be sensitive to see you attending that cricket match?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, Jane, I have a job that involves many responsibilities. It wasn’t my decision that the execution take place on Friday.

JANE HUTCHEON: So you do plan to go to the cricket match?

JOHN HOWARD: I have a duty as the host to go to that match.

JANE HUTCHEON: Would you support…

JOHN HOWARD: And I think the… I think the Australian people will understand that I didn’t set the date of this man’s execution. I had wished there was no date set for his execution, and the idea of not attending the game or of abandoning it, I don’t think it’s something that the majority of the Australian people would necessarily believe I should do.

- from ABC Radio’s AM, 28.11.05 (transcript | MP3)

As Prime Minister, John Howard says he has a duty to attend the Prime Minister’s XI match against the West Indies on Friday, despite the national outrage as an Australian national, Van Nguyen, is scheduled to be executed in Singapore on a drug possession conviction that same day.

Today there were calls for JH to either not attend the game on Friday or even call it off, and there’s a report on ABC Radio’s midday program The World Today that covers this.

Personally, I think there’s nothing to be achieved by the PM not attending the PM XI game. If they were playing against a team from Singapore it might be another matter. I do think it’s appropriate, however, for a minute’s silence to be observed in memory of Nguyen and all those people killed around the world in the name of judicial punishment. Nguyen is due to be hanged at 6am Friday Singapore time (9am in Sydney) and many Australians are planning to observe a minute’s silence at that moment. So will I.

But let’s get back to JH’s declaration in the AM interview that “I have a duty as the host to go to that match.” What happened to that duty on 21 March 2003 when he declined to attend the PM XI’s match against the ATSIC (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission) XI at the Adelaide Oval?

His excuse? Australia, in partnership with the United States and the UK, had just commenced a war in Iraq. (I wrote about this episode in the mid-section of this December 2003 article.)

Considering that it was a war waged against the wishes of the Australian people, without obvious cause and, as we now know, under false pretences, one wonders if that was an acceptable excuse for not going to the cricket at all.

A fabulous innings from Brian Lara is at an end. It’s almost certainly his last Test match in Australia, which makes it a pity for Melbourne and Sydney’s sake.

Lara now has 11,146 runs in Test matches for the West Indies. Let’s hope he can score at least 29 in the second innings to pass Allan Border’s total in Test matches for Australia, and put the world record beyond dispute.

McGrath bowls around the wicket to Lara. A short ball, waist-high, angled across the left-handed batsman, Lara exposes his leg stump as he pulls to deep backward square for a single. He is 214 not out. The crowd rises to give Lara a standing ovation. Lara waves his bat in the air, the Australian players come over to congratulate him. He has passed Allan Border to become the highest run-scorer in Test cricket.

Supposedly.

Something I forgot about in researching my earlier post today is that Allan Border captained the Rest of the World XI against the Marylebone Cricket Club in the five-day match for the MCC’s bicentenary in 1987. Should we then, perhaps, add another 26 runs to Border’s career total?

Can of worms.

More site updates:

1. I’ve transferred more items from my old blog to the present one. Currently, there’s about forty more articles, written between January 2004 and April 2005, to be transferred across, and for now these are reachable from the “Old blog” link on the left.

2. I have also decided not to take any further user registrations on cricket.rickeyre.com, for the simple reason that there is no longer any need for them. As soon as I have finished converting the old blog entries and then proceed with dismantling the Postnuke CMS, I will delete the existing user records.

3. I have now produced a small website as a front-end for my cricket podcasts - www.thenetsessions.net - now all I need to do is design that damn logo

That was a fantastic innings by Brian Lara at the Adelaide Oval yesterday. Overnight, he is 202 not out in a West Indian total of 352 for 7. This morning, the papers are reporting that he needs twelve more runs to overhaul Allan Border’s career aggregate of 11174. But thanks to the ICC, there will be some nagging doubt over the moment when he becomes the leading Test run-scorer of all time.

The ICC, as we will recall, decreed that their six-day game between Australia and an “ICC World XI” in Sydney last month was, for all purposes, a Test match. This is despite the fact that “ICC World” is not a member entity of the International Cricket Council, that the one-sided match was over inside four days, and that the event is unlikely to repeated, leaving the words “ICC World XI” standing out like a sore thumb on twenty-two players’ stats records.

Brian Lara played in that game. It wasn’t one of his finest efforts, scoring 5 and 36, but it does place 41 runs on his Test record as a representative of the mythical “ICC World”.

The ICC-friendly stats show that, before the start of the current Adelaide Test, Lara had scored 10961 Test runs. It is my view that the correct focus is on Lara’s runs in Test matches against other ICC members - in this instance, all the Tests he has played for the West Indies. And that total is 10920.

Which means, with another 202 runs to his credit overnight, that Lara has at this point of time scored 11122 runs in genuine Test cricket. That’s another 53 before he passes Border.

There’s an argument to say that the ICC’s decision to allow “hyper-international” teams into the realm of official Test and ODI cricket should be a catalyst for retrospectively including other RoW matches, and indeed the WSC “supertests” of the late 1970s. But there’s a catch here (and it’s not a Classic). If we include the WSC games as Test matches (which DK Lillee afficianados have been clamouring after for decades), then wouldn’t we need to exclude those official Test matches played at the same time?

In Allan Border’s case, this would remove the first five Tests of his career (three against England and two against Pakistan in 1978-79) from his record. We would, therefore, have to deduct 422 runs from his aggregate, bringing his total back to 10752 (curiously, that would give him a century on debut, 162 at Chennai in 1979-80).

Lara passed 10752 during his innings of 153 against Pakistan at Sabina Park in June this year. Can of Worms.

All of which is reason why Test cricket should only be recognised as matches between ICC full member entities, and not redefined at the whim of the ICC marketing consultants.

I’ll be happy if Lara reaches 214 today, but I’ll be saving the full ovation for 255.

I’ve remixed and reloaded issue 5 of The Net Sessions to improve the clarity of the opening couple of minutes of the podcast which I published yesterday.

I’ve also boosted the encoding quality of the Ogg version by an increment. The updated versions, which are no different in content or running time to the original, can be downloaded from The Net Sessions homepage. Yesterday’s publication announcement will now download the new files for those who haven’t done so yet.

It’s late but it’s here at last. The fifth edition of my cricket podcast, The Net Sessions, is now online.

The latest edition, seventeen minutes in length, is devoted to last month’s ICC Awards ceremony in Sydney. I was in the press gallery at the Four Seasons Hotel that evening and recorded some audio from the awards dinner (which was telecast but, amazingly, not shown live anywhere in the world), as well as the press conferences with the winners. Some of the audio quality is a bit lesser than I would have liked, but I only have myself to blame for that.

The centerpiece, and highlight, of this podcast is the excerpt from Kevin Pietersen’s press conference. He’s a very self-confident lad, and I’m sure if you read a transcript his words would appear brash, but he comes across with lots of charm and humility… and a dead raccoon on his head.

You’ll hear audio of most of the night’s winners, plus the voices of ICC president Ehsan Mani, master of ceremonies Mark Nicholas, and wonderfully deadpan major award presenter Richie Benaud. You’ll also hear lots of sound effects, including one particularly obnoxious mobile phone, from the media room.

The MP3 of the Net Sessions (64kpbs, mono, 16:49, 7.69 Megs) can be downloaded here. It’s also available in Ogg Vorbis (Quality 0, mono, 16:49, 5.96 Mega) and can be downloaded here.

I’m inviting listeners to have your say in future editions of The Net Sessions via voicemail. You can drop me a voicemail on Skype to rickeyre, or as an attachment to rickeyre at gmail.com, or to my voicemail numbers at:
Telephone voicemail (UK) - (020) 7617 7542; international +4420-7617-7542
Telephone voicemail (Aus) - (02) 8569 0397; international +612-8569-0397

Opportunities exist for sponsorship announcements within each podcast and, for longer programs, a 10-15 second advertisement. If you’re interested, please leave a message on my feedback page, selecting “Advertising/Sponsorship Opportunities” on the Subject menu. Or leave me a voicemail at any of the above addresses. Or give me a call during Australian daytime hours on 0412 321617 (international, +614-123-21617).

The latest nomination for cricket headline of the year goes to the Independent on Sunday for:

Vaughan Stands Firm On Knee

Read Stephen Brenkley’s article here (until it goes into the subscription archive).

I must confess that I haven’t watched much of the current Australia-West Indies Test series to date. For the most part, I’ve had the alibi of Other Committments, but it’s also true that I haven’t found it very motivating to follow. It’s a shame, because I have always enjoyed following Aus-WI contests over the last three decades or so.

As I write, Australia are 7/362 in their first innings at Bellerive, shortly after lunch on day three, 213 in front. Brad Hodge has just brought up his half-century in his maiden Test innings, and yesterday Mike Hussey notched up his first Test century in his second Test. Both these guys are wonderful reserves to have for any international eleven. Hodge has probably taken over the Martyn/Katich spot in the team for a while, but I fear Hussey’s place in the annals of Test cricket will be along the lines of Tom Moody or Martin Love.

I can’t make much comment about the West Indian batting at this stage, I keep blinking when they play their innings. I keep thinking about the 1975-76 WI team, they had just won the World Cup and then got flogged 5-1 by Australia in the Tests. They were a better team than 1-5, and weren’t far from developing into one of the greatest teams of all time. I wish I could say that about the 2005-06 West Indians. However…

In case you haven’t picked up on it yet, the Cricket Australia website has a regularly updated MP3 section, mostly comprising press conference interviews. They also have ABC commentary highlights of each day of the Test - day one and day two are already available.

The launch in September of The Surfer, CricInfo’s first genuine incursion into modern blogging technology, caused quite a buzz in our part of the blogosphere. That was followed in October by Wicket to Wicket, touted as a platform for CricInfo’s columnists to discuss topical matters. All very promising, even though they were yet to open the floodgates to public comments.

But why, then, do we still have the cumbersome “diaries” to wade through? Point in question, Andrew Miller’s current Pakistan Tour Diary. I can’t give you a permalink to the diary home page because there is none. I can link to the “November 7 to November 13” page, which currently has items for the days Nov.7 to 11. Presumably on the 14th they’ll start a new page, and so forth. I just hope the links are kept (manually) up to date, as didn’t always happen with Gideon Haigh’s diary on CricInfo during the Ashes.

Miller’s diary is quite interesting, but where is Wisden CricInfo’s committment to the blogging technology that would undoubtedly increase it exposure?